The Devil's Playthings

The rapture has happened. The believers are gone and the rest of us are stuck here. Chaos reigns and many die, then Lucifer shows up. The devil introduces a game where people must survive in a giant arena all while a soul eating demon hunts them.Epic-scale warfare, genocide, false flag attacks, and political intrigue sizzle the pages of this action thriller in a fantasy fiction setting replete with historical allegories.The Sodorfians and Dachwaldians love each other dearly. The way a cat loves a bath. The way a lion loves a hyena. The way a rattler loves to have its tail pulled.They thought they ironed out their differences during their last all-out war, but disturbing events are about to make that look like a lover's quarrel. When the Dachwaldians discover nearly all the crops in their country have been deliberately poisoned just days before harvest, they realize it's time to get rid of the Sodorfians once and for all. When the Sodorfians discover the remains of several hundred of their brave soldiers looking like they took a dive into a wood chipper, they believe a thank-you note is in order, one that must be hand-delivered by a one-hundred-thousand-man army. But the Dachwaldians have a trick or three up their sleeve that they feel will teach the Sodorfians victory isn't won by superior numbers alone.As these two lovebirds prepare for their encounter, they realize only one can walk away, as one will play the role of the female praying mantis and consume the other like a tasty morsel.Neither side realizes a puppet master sits behind the scenes, provoking each side to action against the other like a director of a well-rehearsed group of actors. A wild card sits uneasily in the puppet master's prison, as anxious to escape as the warden is to get rid of him. But a prophecy tells him he can't. Not until the play finishes.